The Day Before the Nightmare
by Dibsthe1
Summary: The last day before Zim and Gir arrive. Lotsa Membrane family stuff.
1. Who has a WHY to

Disclaimer: My head's not big! And I don't own Invader Zim! Jhonen Vasquez does.

Zim's getting closer... he actually gets a line in this one! (An unspoken one.)

--

The Day Before the Nightmare

Chapter One: Who has a WHY to

Dib got out of bed, took off his UFO pajamas, got dressed and headed for the kitchen, hoping today would be better than yesterday.

In the kitchen he found Gaz already seated at the table eating her cereal, which spared him the usual ordeal of "negotiating" who got to pour it first. Dib's next pleasant surprise came when he found enough cereal remaining in the box for his breakfast as well. Wow, two good omens for the day and he hadn't even finished breakfast yet!

The Professor also sat at the table, buttering SuperToast, his latest invention. Almost as soon as Dib sat down, the Professor started listing off his son's orders for the day, sounding tense and frantic as he did so, as if trying to keep ahead of something. "Brush your teeth, son! Study hard and invest wisely! See your dentist... twice a year! Buy an RRSP while you're young and avoid trans fats! Oh... and protect your little sister until your mother comes home."

"Yes, Dad." At that last, Dib uneasily looked at Gaz out of the corner of his eye to see if she would shoot him a look that said, "Yes, I heard it too." But she continued to crunch away at her cereal as if their father had said nothing at all unusual.

As his father extolled the virtues of exercising... three times a week, Dib finished his cereal and licked off the spoon. He tugged at the corner of one of his boots. They were getting too small, again; he would need new ones soon. Dib was confident that his father would give him plenty of money to buy another pair... once caught in a sufficiently unguarded moment. While the Professor indulged both children to no end with luxuries like expensive electronic equipment, material necessities were another matter altogether. For those, he invariably said, "Go ask your mother."

"Now make sure you do that, son," the Professor continued. "I may be late coming home from work this evening..."

"_Late coming home from work..." Well, what else was new. _

"... so make sure your little sister eats her supper. She didn't finish her homework yesterday; I understand she was playing some sort of a game, so don't let her do that again today, and if I'm really late make sure she goes to bed on time, and tell her to..."

Dib knew only too well that Gaz would most likely maim him if he tried telling her to do anything, not the least of which was setting down her GameSlave... but as usual he found it easier to say, "Yes, Dad."

_Gaz is right here; try telling her yourself! _Dib fumed silently.

"...be more careful. 'Somebody,'" the Professor slipped a wink into his voice, "dropped a glass of milk in the kitchen last night...! So if you know what's good for you, boy, you won't let her do that again! By the time I found it the bacteria count was - "

Dib felt an ache begin to build in his stomach; he didn't want to imagine Gaz's reaction if he dared try telling her to wipe up a spill. "I wasn't even in the kitchen when it happened, Dad. I heard it and knew this one was Gaz's. She's old enough and perfectly able to - "

The Professor pointed a finger in his face. "Aha! You DID hear it, boy, so you KNEW about it... and you SHOULD have cleaned it up!"

Dib could only shake his head at this leap of scientific logic.

"Do this, do that," his father continued. "You're a big boy and I'm counting on you... "

Dib could only wonder why age had to be forever relative._ Somehow I was sure "big" enough to take care of everything last year... when I was the SAME AGE this "little" Gaz is now!_

"... to keep things running smoothly until your mother comes home."

"Um, Dad," Dib finally said. "That's... going to be a... long time." Gaz's chewing slowed down.

"What is, son?"

"Mom's not coming home. She's dead. For a few years now." Gaz half opened an eye, an eye which was looking straight at Dib.

"Still in denial." The Professor looked down, shaking his head. "Son, what did I tell you?" he said quietly to Dib, too quietly. "Don't say that about your mother."

The Professor took a much more relaxed tone with his daughter, and when Gaz spoke to him, she actually sounded almost lukewarm. Instead of delivering an endless list of orders, he asked her how she was today, and how skool was, and did she still like her teacher, and did she have any neat field trips coming up, and...

Dib sighed and looked away from the table. The Professor provided support and protection to Gaz, while being more of a disciplinarian and role model for Dib. This had worked perfectly as long as their mother had been around to provide the complement. However, the Professor still saw no need to adjust his treatment of either child.

Between his father and sister, Dib found himself in a horrible double bind on the subject of his late mother. Dib had faced the truth, dealt with it, and was now ready to move on. But his father would have them all acting as if she was still alive, and whenever Dib did this, the realization that she really wasn't stabbed his heart like an icepick all over again. Gaz, on the other hand, was only too happy to encourage and indulge their father in this whim.

As their father left for work, Dib and Gaz finished preparing to leave for skool. Dib felt a strange distance standing between himself and what remained of his family, as if they were neighbours in an apartment house instead of blood relatives.

Dib was watching Gaz very closely, trying to gauge her mood. After their mother died, Gaz's violence toward him had increased, all right, but not as dramatically as Dib had feared it would. In fact, she hadn't hit him at all so far today, and considering that they had already finished breakfast, that was REALLY good.

Dib's preparations for the day included checking his pocket for his camera and alien sleep cuffs... just in case. About six months ago he'd heard something distinctly and undeniably otherworldly while monitoring the night skies through his headphones. Watching the sky even harder for UFOs when he went outside ever since had turned up only lots of swamp gas, a couple of weather balloons, a migrating heron blown off its course, several gliders, and some kid's kite, but still Dib kept vigilant.

Dib kept up a running commentary on every single thing in the sky as he and Gaz walked to skool. As they split up and headed to their respective classrooms, he wished her, "Have a nice day."

"Eh," replied Gaz, where usually she would have told him to drop dead. Today she hadn't even told him to shut up more than once or twice the whole way! Her mood was positively sunny for some reason... getting her best score ever on one of her games the night before, most likely.

Dib headed for his own classroom with caution, suppressing with great difficulty his habit of talking to himself. He couldn't let anyone catch him talking about That Water Fountain.

The previous day when he went to drink from the fountain just outside the door, he had found it broken. As the old familiar anxiety stirred in his gut, he had backed away nervously and then ran before anyone caught him and blamed him for breaking it. Of course he hadn't broken it or had anything to do with it. But that never kept him out of trouble when something happened at home that was outside his control.

In fact, lately Dib felt more and more like everything bad was his fault... and it was getting to the point where he tried to avoid looking at the newspapers or the TV news. As irrational as he knew it to be to feel somehow responsible for disasters half a world away, that still didn't stop him from expecting to be blamed and punished.

But to Dib's relief, he saw Melvin drinking out of the water fountain in question. Water dribbled down the front of Melvin's shirt as he wiped his mouth.

Another good sign! The water fountain which he found broken had been fixed with nobody asking him how he broke it, or insisting that he tell them who did. Whew! Maybe it would also be a good day at skool.

Skool... where the work was so easy he was bored, a feeling he hated, and the socializing was so difficult he felt stupid, a feeling he hated even more. On his first day of kindergarten, Dib had tried to make conversation by innocently asking, "What did your father discover last night?" Instead of bringing a new friend home for dinner that day, he had asked his mother what a "showoff" was, and why didn't the other kids want to talk about their fathers's inventions?

His mother had poured him a glass of milk and a cut him a chocolate brownie before sitting down with him to explain that not every kid had an inventor for a father. She furthermore warned him that some kids would be jealous, and that others would only pretend to be his friends just so they could get to meet the world-famous Professor Membrane. She then suggested that he ask the other kids what their hobbies were, in hopes that common interests could spark friendships.

When word got around that Dib was into hunting for Bigfoot and ghosts and aliens, well, then it REALLY got bad for him. A simple showoff they could ignore, but an elementary skool classroom is no place to be labelled a "weirdo."

While Dib's mother had felt bad for him, she still encouraged him to be himself at all times. If they didn't want you the way you were, they weren't your friends anyway, she kept saying, and trying to be someone you're not is not fair to yourself. "You'll make friends someday, Dib; you're such a cool kid I know you will! Now... what fun thing would you like to do now?"

More often than not, they had ended up reading a book, which Dib thought was more fun than just about anything else. Dib couldn't help smiling as he reflected on this; all that reading had give him a vocabulary twice as large as any other kid in his class. This sure came in handy; when nobody else at the skool would talk to him, Dib had begun talking to himself. As soon as he did so, he found that the quality and intelligence level of the conversations in which he partook went up enormously. Why, whenever -

"**DIB!!!"** Ms. Bitters's yardstick slammed down on his desk in front of him as he jumped.

"Y - Yes ma'am?"

"Just what planet ARE you on?" snarled Ms. Bitters. "For the third time, do you know the answer?"

Dib glanced at the blackboard and saw a list of sentences, all with one word either underlined or missing. Quickly he found the first remaining sentence with an empty space and filled it in appropriately. Ms. Bitters grunted with something that wasn't exactly satisfaction and went on to ask the pupil behind him the next question.

At lunch, Dib and Gaz sat together until Gaz finished her lunch; then she headed outside to be by herself. Dib followed her.

When she turned around and glared at him, he explained, "I have to watch you."

"Get over yourself Dib! I'm not a baby!" Gaz snapped.

"I don't like it any more than you do, but I can't get out of it either, Gaz."

"He's not here; he can't see us!"

"Okay, okay, I'll sit over here then! Jeez..."

Gaz claimed a seat on the bench next to the basketball court and sat there playing away on her GameSlave. Only Dib realized what violence lurked beneath so placid a picture.

Dib sank onto the next bench, watching Gaz with one eye, and as ever, the sky with the other. He took out his camera, noting how many exposures remained. He had already wasted most of the roll on false alarms, unfortunately.

Dib knew that he could not risk being caught without at least one frame of film ready; indeed, the more the better. This was far bigger than something breaking or even a plane crashing somewhere. Being privy to that ominous transmission had conferred on him the sole responsibility for keeping lookout and spreading the alarm when the aliens did arrive. If they succeeded in attacking the earth, he _would_ be responsible for whatever followed.... not something Dib wanted on his head. Serious business indeed.

And if, perchance, a UFO were to actually fly over the skool, and he pointed it out to someone, well, they'd pretty much have to believe him then, wouldn't they? And stop making those crazy twirling motions, often right in front of him. But that would never happen. UFO sightings happened only in other places, places like Roswell, New Mexico and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Suddenly Dib realized he was seeing something that looked like nothing he'd ever seen before! In his excitement he briefly tried to balance atop the backrest, then settled for standing on the seat. He squinted, then as he grew more sure, lined up the not yet identified flying object in his viewfinder and held a shaking finger over the shutter release. If this was the day he would have his own Close Encounter of the First Kind and see a UFO, photograph it, report it and keep the world safe, this would officially qualify as a Tremendously Good Day Indeed!

Dib held his breath, waiting until the object got close enough that anyone would be able to see that the object in the photograph was a UFO. Just as he was about to click the shutter, he sighed with disappointment and dropped the camera back into his pocket. Just another airplane.

Only now did Dib hear the basketball bouncing. He looked around, wondering how long this had been going on. Torque was shooting baskets and being none too careful where the ball bounced. Dib winced as he saw this; even though the class bully was no friend of his, the sight of Gaz in full Self-righteous Vengeance Mode was no easy thing to watch.

"Protect Gaz," said his father's voice in Dib's head. "She's your little sister!"

While she might be a year younger, nothing was little about Gaz. Nothing. Not her appetite for video games and pizza, not her berserk shrieks when she was pissed off, and certainly least of all her evil, vicious temper.

_ME... I'M supposed to protect... GAZ. Somebody who can flatten not only me, but anyone else in my class if not the skool. Uhhh Huhhhh... _

Sighing, he figured he'd better do something. _I just hope I don't end up in intensive care over this. _

"Uhm, Torque", he began, his stomach churning as he anticipated what would most likely follow, "you'd better leave my little sister alone."

"Uh... huh." Torque merely bounced the ball harder and more carelessly if anything.

"Listen, Torque, I mean it. Stop bothering my sister or I'll-"

"Or you'll what?" Torque looked amused. He even stopped bouncing his basketball and stared at Dib, as if this time he was actually interested in what Dib had to say.

Dib paused, unsure of what came next. ".. Or... or I'll make you sorry."

After a second's pause of disbelief Torque burst out laughing. "Yeah right!" he hooted.

"Really, she's not bothering you. Why don't you play basketball at the other hoop - "

"So. What." Torque resumed bouncing the ball. "I'll play... anywhere... I want... Got that... you... four... eyed... FREAK?" He emphasized the last word with an especially hard bounce of the ball.

"Stop it, Torque! You almost hit her that time!"

"Why you skinny little - !" Tossing aside the basketball, Torque raised his fists and took a step toward Dib.

Dib also put up his fists, but as he was no jock, not very effectively. None too deterred by the prohibition against hitting someone wearing glasses, Torque slid a punch between Dib's fists straight into his nose. Dib shook his head and awkwardly swung his fist at Torque, who dodged without effort and hit him again.

Usually Torque would punch Dib once or twice in the nose or stomach and that would be that. However, having gone up to Torque and challenged him, Dib knew he could expect no mercy this time.

As Torque bore down on him, Dib cringed in anticipation of the worst. As a hand grabbed his collar and yanked him back, Dib's eyes snapped open in terror; this had to be Torque's buddies ganging up to pull him down so they could all take turns working him over...

End of Chapter One


	2. Live can bear almost

Disclaimer: My head's not big! And I don't own Invader Zim! Jhonen Vasquez does.

Chapter Two: Live can bear almost

... but in fact it was Coach Walrus, the gym teacher, who had a hold on both boys' collars and was marching them into the skool. "Your pummelling was amusing for a while, kids, but now it's just scary!"

Never in his life had Dib been so relieved to be on his way to the principal's office.

This time both Torque and Dib got in trouble for fighting. Torque nearly exploded when the sentence was handed down. "Whaddyamean THIRTY minutes for fighting? HOCKEY PLAYERS only get five!" Torque's outburst netted him an additional ten minutes, giving Dib a decent head start for leaving skool grounds. Whew, so many good things were happening today, he couldn't keep count any more! When his detention time was up, Dib wasted no time bolting. He ran all the way home where he slammed the door behind him. Safe! Well, until tomorrow, that was.

No, not even until then. His relief was short lived. Gaz, who'd arrived home earlier, flew out of the living room and tore into Dib, even though at the time she had given no sign of noticing the drama being enacted for her benefit. She backed him into a corner of the kitchen and proceeded to hurl everything within reach at him.

"HOW DARE YOU!! I wanted to DESTROY that JERK!" she shrieked, throwing cups and plates as Dib frantically tried to keep clear of the non-stop fusillade of missiles. Actually, she could have easily taken Torque with one arm tied behind her back and enjoyed doing so, but was furious at having lost her chance.

"Gaz, please!" A mug exploded against the wall over Dib's head as he ducked. When Gaz yanked open a clattering drawer full of sharp utensils Dib decided not to push his luck any further. He dodged around her and dove for his room, ducking and weaving as Gaz flung a hastily grabbed handful. That they all missed did nothing to improve Gaz's mood. She worked off the additional spite by throwing more items until one final large object that sounded like the blender shook Dib's closed door. Gaz's loud footsteps stomped back to the living room, where the game sounds began once more.

Dib breathed a long sigh of relief. He was once again safe in his room, a dimly lit cavern of coolness... a room filled with everything he loved most... his refuge from all the bullies and from Gaz.

Or was Gaz a bully too? Naw, she couldn't be. A bully was someone who picked on those smaller and younger than they themselves were. Or was a bully anyone who controlled you through fear... regardless of age and size? Dib used to think he knew what the word bully meant, but when he considered Gaz he wasn't so sure any more.

Dib sat at his desk and decided his homework could wait, as it rarely took him more than half an hour. In any event, his current project was of far greater significance.

He looked through some back issues of his UFO magazines before booting up his computer to continue researching his latest fixation, aliens. While some theories suggested that the aliens would be friendly, not all of them were so optimistic. Dib had long ago decided to err on the side of caution and to conduct himself as if these beings were out to terrorize, enslave, and destroy his planet given half a chance.

And from the exhaustive list of alien encounters he had compiled, it seemed like every tenth person on the planet, people from even the humblest walks of life, barely a single one with even the slightest interest in the paranormal, had had a close encounter of some kind with an alien.

"Where's the _sense_ in this?" Dib stormed, shaking his clenched fists at the ceiling in his frustration. "I've studied aliens more than anybody... and I've never seen even a UFO!"

An actual sighting would be the culmination, the apogee, so to speak, of his life long obsessive study with the subject. It was something he owed to himself as well as to the world.

Finally, figuring it to be dinnertime, Dib cautiously opened his door and peered out. The hall was strewn with broken cutlery and assorted household items. Whoever would be cleaning up this mess, it would certainly not be Gaz.

Hoping she had cooled down at least somewhat, Dib prepared their microwave dinners and placed one on the coffee table for his sister. Only then did he see the empty cookie package, chip bags and candy wrappers piled high around her.

"Here's your supper, Gaz."

Gaz scowled at him. "I'm not hungry... any more. You sure took your sweet time preparing dinner."

Dib decided not to risk reminding her of why dinner was late. "Well, it's ready now."

"I won't eat it 'til I'm good and ready, Dib." By the looks of it, that wouldn't be any time soon. "You also took your sweet time coming home today."

"I got detention."

"Why." Gaz never bothered to raise her voice at the end of her questions. She didn't ask for answers. She demanded them.

"For fighting. Torque." Even though Gaz had witnessed the entire thing, Dib didn't dare reply any other way.

Gaz's lip curled with scorn and triumph. "See. I don't know why you even bother. You couldn't fight your way out of a paper bag set on fire and put out with acid."

Dib retreated to the kitchen where he ate his own microwaved supper. After cleaning up after himself and then picking up the hall and kitchen, he retrieved his laptop and headphones, got a soda from the fridge and headed for the garage. After climbing to the roof, he carefully pulled the ladder up after himself just in case.

A few weeks earlier, the Professor, absentminded as ever, had put the ladder away while Dib was on the roof, not remembering he hadn't taken it out in the first place. When a storm began brewing, Dib had called down the chimney for help. Holding an umbrella, Gaz had come out almost immediately. Pointing to the gathering clouds while trying not to lose his footing, the shivering Dib had begged her to tell their father he was still up there, to get the ladder, to do something!! But Gaz had come out to enjoy the show, not to help him. Near panic, Dib looked around for the ladder one last time and noticed the eaves trough. Nimbly he skittered across the roof, grabbing the rain spout just as the rain began to lash down in earnest. Dib slid down the spout as if it was a fire pole, barely ahead of the oncoming rain, and dove through an open window... right into a sink full of water.

The roof was another of Dib's refuges; very few children could throw anything heavy up this far.

It was right here, in fact, that he had heard that alien transmission six months ago, but nothing like it since.

Dib sat down against the chimney, opened his soda and drank deeply, then began to review his day. He'd had a good breakfast, he wasn't blamed for breaking the water fountain, Ms. Bitters hadn't caught him empty-handed, he'd escaped getting beaten up by Torque... twice, and Gaz had attacked him only once. Lately he was down to living one day at a time, and today had been a good day... an exceptionally good one, actually.

"Then why do I feel so... so _hollow_?"

Dib knew why, even if he couldn't have put it into words. His life had no direction. He was always running, and always running away, never toward anything. At skool, being picked on and laughed at, he wished he was at home.... and at home... once more being picked on and laughed at... he wished he was at skool.

The worst thing about today had been that scene with Gaz. Even with that sort of incident happening more and more often lately, Dib had long ago stopped trying to confide in anyone about his problems with his sister. When he tried turning to his father he got, "Your mother deals with that sort of thing; she'll be home any minute." When he had risked confiding in an aunt, uncle or neighbour, a couple of times he actually got, "Are you sure it's not you who's beating her?"

When people were confronted with a choice between what they saw and what they believed, Dib knew only too well that they went with what they believed. Even when Gaz had wreaked her havoc on him in front of a funeral home full of relatives, not one single one of them had realized the source of it was her, not him. They all still thought Gaz was sweet, harmless and innocent like little girls were all said to be.

The very few who actually did believe him were the ones who told him to suck it up, you're a boy, aren't you? "It's BECAUSE I'm a boy that I can't do anything back!" Dib reminded them, and then got, "She'll grow out of it." Well, if Gaz was growing out of anything, she was growing _into _something else even worse.

Dib now hated the sight of the JERK who'd actually chuckled before saying "Gaz rocks!" after Dib had finally come to trust him enough to open up on so embarrassing a matter_. Would you say I "rocked" if I so much as threatened her... even ONCE? So why is it so great for her to do that and worse to me?_

The thing he heard most often, and which made him not know whether to laugh or cry, was that Gaz loved him to pieces, she just had a funny way of showing it. _Oh, REAL funny. Hilarious, actually. In fact, it's positively hysterical, _thought Dib. _Only I'm not laughing._

Finally Dib left off his reverie, and set down the half finished bottle of soda to open the radar software, then tried listening once more through his headphones. Still nothing remotely similar to that fleeting transmission six months ago... and still he was picking up that interference, that tinny electronic noise, that absurd and never-ending buzzing that, if he had to describe it, sounded like "Doom doom doo doom doom..." and which was, if anything, getting even louder.

It made no sense, either the interference itself or the fact that there was no way to remove it. The headphones were outside warranty so he'd had to pay for a whole new set... and STILL he was picking it up!

Dib sighed, then took out his handcuffs and dispiritedly snapped them open and closed, open and closed, staring into space as he did so.

"I KNOW I didn't imagine that transmission. I heard it clear as a bell, plain as day. You do NOT just look at the stars and hear them say, 'You'll serve us... serve us curly fries!'"

Dib lay back, looking straight up so that he could see nothing else but the sky. A meteor glowed into brief life before just as quickly fading. His mother had told him they were -

The one person who had ever understood his problem with Gaz would never come home, no matter what his father kept saying. The stars blurred, but the tears that filled his eyes this time wouldn't fall. So that was it, then. Finally he had no more tears left to shed.

He rolled over, tired and worn, his unfocused eyes staring straight down. If a day like this could count as a good one, the darkness running along the bottom of the outside wall could look mighty inviting. Afterwards, his father would most likely get a housekeeper as he should have done in the first place. A kid of Dib's age looking after himself was one thing; a kid of Dib's age being forced to take total responsibility for a second child who scoffed at his tenuous authority and who took a perverse pride in being as willfully stubborn and overbearing as she possibly could was quite another.

Still staring into the darkness, Dib reached for the rest of his soda. Instead, his hand tipped the bottle over and before he could catch it, the bottle rolled off with frightening speed to crash half a second later into the black silence surrounding the house. That's how easy it could be, how quickly it could all be over. If he did go ahead and do the same thing, he wouldn't have to face these awful days any more.

Dib took a long hard look at the listening apparatus. For the past few months it had been literally the only thing keeping him alive. Through this machine he'd heard the transmission, which made him responsible for whatever came of it. And now even that wasn't working. He was just paranoid enough to wonder if the aliens were watching him, ready to pounce on the earth the second he did leap. "Even dead, it would still be all my fault."

Sighing, Dib packed up his computer and headphones. No, he would never really do himself in... but thoughts like these served as a powerful solace for getting him through many a bad night.

Or suppose he pretended to abandon all his real interests, and worked at fitting in and being just like everyone else. He'd probably find a friend or two eventually, once the jibes and taunts about being a ghost chaser or alien hunter died down with nothing to back them up.

The next thought froze him, eyes open wide. Was there actually any difference between these two? The person he really was would be dead either way!

Dib climbed down from the roof and put the ladder away. With a weary sigh of resignation, he hung his head and retreated inside the house just before the Voot Cruiser flew by overhead.

"Doom doom doom doo doom..."

Slack jawed and drooling all over himself, staring straight ahead, Zim was by now reduced to a silent, desperate mantra. _Are we there yet... Are we there yet... Are we there yet... Are we... ?_

Dib headed for his room, got undressed, put on his UFO pajamas, and got in bed, hoping tomorrow would be at least as good as today.

End of Chapter Two


	3. Any HOW   Nietzsche

Disclaimer: My head's not big! And I don't own Invader Zim! Jhonen Vasquez does.

Chapter Three: Any HOW - Nietzsche

The next day was exactly the same... as all the bad ones.

This time Dib made it to the kitchen first, but before he had finished preparing his breakfast, Gaz came in, snatched the cereal box out of his hand, and poured the last of it into her own bowl.

Such brazen rudeness would have struck anyone else speechless, but sadly, by now Dib saw nothing unusual about being treated as if he had no feelings whatsoever. "Gaz! I had that first!"

"You think you own all the cereal, don't you Dib! Well you don't! You just don't!" Gaz spat. She opened the fridge and took out the milk.

"Well you don't own it all either! This morning I had it first!" Dib repeated. "Doesn't that mean anything to you... at all?"

Gaz had calmly sat down while Dib was saying this, and was now pouring milk over her cereal before smugly chewing and swallowing a spoonful right in front of him. "Nope."

"Well now what am I going to eat for breakfast?"

"This..." Gaz slapped him sharply in the mouth. "... and plenty more of it, if you don't shut up."

As Dib sat at the table with a couple of toasted pastries, Professor Membrane appeared at the breakfast table on his hover screen. He'd had to leave for work early.

"Did you give your sister her supper, son?"

"Yes, Dad, I did."

"At supper time?"

"Uh, not exactly, but it's a long story - "

His father sighed. "When I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it."

"Dad, I even brought it to her and everything, but she just wouldn't eat it!" The microwaved dinner would still be on the coffee table had Dib not removed it himself the previous night after Gaz had decided to go to bed.

"I'm disappointed in you, boy."

"In ME? ME? I can't eat it FOR her! And stuff... just... happened... "

His father waved away Dib's protests. "Son... take care of your little sister until - "

Dib stood and took a firm hold on the edge of the table with both hands. He spoke slowly and evenly. "Dad... Mom... is not... coming home."

This time Dib was glad his father was on the hover screen; the Professor's hand, slowly lowering, leaped back up showing Dib the back of his hand before he remembered he was actually at the lab, not physically in the same room as Dib.

"Ohhh, no... !" Dib groaned, blood draining from his face, as his father's hand hovered awkwardly in the air.

The Professor settled for jabbing his finger at Dib through the screen and booming, "Don't say that about your mother!"

Before Dib even left the table to finish preparing for skool, Gaz tackled him to the floor where she punched his head and stomach and kicked his shins mercilessly. When it was finally over, Dib slowly picked himself up, venturing, "Am I allowed to know what I did... or didn't do... this time?"

Normally Gaz wouldn't have deigned to reply, but saw fit to do so on this occasion. She fastened a steely grip on Dib's shirt collar and yanked his head down until they were eye to eye. "Next time you say something like that, just be close enough for him to hit you if he wants to. He couldn't reach you this time, so I did it for him."

Dib didn't watch the sky this morning for UFOs quite as intensely as he usually did. When they got to skool, Gaz watched with obvious relish as Torque chased Dib all around the skoolyard until the bell rang. Dib ducked inside the building, Torque not far behind. Dib was safe for a while... safe physically, at least. The bully now pounded his fist as he declared his intention to catch Dib and make up for yesterday... only this time when no nosy teachers were around.

"I was late for the game and had to run laps after... because of YOU! Enjoy today, because you won't enjoy tomorrow! You're gonna hurt, Freak! HURT!"

Somebody had seen Dib aiming his camera at the sky the day before, guessed the reason, and run around making sure everyone else heard about it. Hooting loudly, Dib's classmates mocked him all the way across the classroom to his desk. One of the kids covered his face with the heels of his hands pressed together, yelling, "Face hugger! AAAH!" Another held up two fingers like antennae and squeaked, "Take me to your leader!" Still another held out his middle finger and croaked, "E... T... phone... home!" Stolidly ignoring their taunts, but burning inwardly, Dib took his seat.

When Ms. Bitters told the class to pass in their homework, Dib gasped. Between everything that happened the previous night he'd done something he never had before... he'd completely forgotten it! He wasn't looking forward to the time when Ms. Bitters passed back the corrected work. It made her day like nothing else when a student forgot something, Dib reflected with a shudder. She would build such an incident into a cruel parody of a stand up comedian routine.

Dib was planning his third alternative escape route to get out of the skool, the yard, and through several blocks to keep ahead of Torque when suddenly -

"DIB!"

Dib's pencil snapped as he jumped. "Yes, ma'am?"

"I SAID, 'What is the answer?'"

The board offered no clues today. "I... I don't know, ma'am."

"Well, well, well," gloated Ms. Bitters with gleeful sarcasm. She floated over to loom above Dib's desk. "Membrane, the class brain, 'doooesn't knoooow'. You are dooomed!"

The classroom filled with laughter. Ms. Bitters asked one of the slower students, who was delighted at the chance to show he knew something. "One and one is TWO!" Keef announced. Dib then realized that Ms. Bitters had been asking simpler and simpler questions while she tried to get his attention as he'd been preoccupied with the problem of Torque.

Dib sank in his desk and waited for the laughter to die down. An evil teacher, bullying classmates, no friends... Any adult working under such conditions would have long since quit and found another job. And then after each day here, he went home to a distant, demanding father who didn't even always bother to be there, no mother at all, and... and Gaz. Grownups who had to deal with less than that filed for divorce or moved. But Dib was a kid, and so he had no choice.

No choice except -

For the rest of the day, Dib consoled himself with thoughts of throwing himself off the roof... which, ironically, cheered him up considerably. Oddly, now that he had something to look forward to... well, so to speak... this skool day brightened immediately.

Then something happened that would completely banish even the merest glimmer of suicide from Dib's mind forever. In the same breathless second, Dib identified his immediate goal, accepted his mission, saw his misunderstood passion vindicated, and joyously received all the proof he would ever need that he was not crazy, when the door opened and... one of THEM walked in...

Dib's chin hit the floor and he gaped until his glasses nearly dropped off. Other than that, the only thing he could manage to do was point. He believed in some pretty far out things, even he was willing to admit that much on occasion, but never did he dare dream that he would ever behold such a thing so close... and right in his own classroom!

He had been right all along. He had known they were out there. For six months he'd had advance knowledge of something, something of world-shaking significance, that these frivolous, oblivious children had not, for all their teasing and taunting. A lifetime of studying the subject, capped by six months of dedicated vigilance, had finally, at long last, paid off.

This specimen was as tall as Dib himself, with vivid green skin, unearthly facial features, and the most transparent, amateurish disguise Dib had ever seen. "Close encounters" indeed... encounters could not possibly get much closer than this!

Not ten feet away from Dib stood an undeniable, indisputable space alien.

The Beginning

A/N: I really couldn't tell you how long I had the idea for this one; it may be older than "Dib Believes in Ghosts." Originally I planned and wrote it with Dib seriously considering suicide as an option, but when that failed the "Would he really?" test, I knew I was facing some rewriting.


End file.
